I travelled with two friends to Pushkar for the weekend. It was a wonderful break from the routine lifestyle of Jaipur. We took the train and navigated our way to the small holy and touristy city, Pushkar. We found ourselves wondering through fields of the small neighboring village, where we watched as people farmed on desert land. The irrigation systems certainly were not conserving water as you would have imagined they would have.

As we attempted to find our way back to the city, we found ourselves on the opposite side of the famous hindu lake of Pushkar. We didn’t really know about it before we arrived. We knew there was a lake and when we asked if we would be able to swim in it, we were strictly told no and that we shouldn’t put our feet into the water. We laughed at this and still do, because no one ever clued us into how religious it was, we found that out on our own. It looked like Italy in some ways, I’ll post a picture soon. Cows and monkeys wandered in packs along the steps and the layers of pigeons took off every so often. Families of people shared these steps, standing and sitting barefoot, respecting the space.

A quick side note- I just received a piping hot, sugary, milky cup of chai… This may be a bit of why I love India.

So we wandered on and visited a well known Brahma temple and then dined in places catering to westerners. I love indian food, but I must admit, it was refreshing to see menus with other cuisines on it. By the end of the day we ate at three different rooftop restaurants, our favorite being The Laughing Buddha, where a guy cooked us the most amazing meal in one pan in a room the size of the average american closet and we were able to see the sun set.

Day two of our excursion, after a night of stargazing on top of a frighteningly tall rooftop that looked out over an alarmingly quiet city, began with a lovely breakfast at a cafe type location. We then proceeded to do the forbidden, which is what I really want to tell you about. What did we do? We rented bikes. I did take far too many photos of it before even riding it, and then upon riding it, it took all of my will power to try to stop thinking about cleaning my chain.

Okay, I will tell you more about my biking adventure in a week or so.
TIME TO TRAVEL! pics and more thoughts later!